Find answers to these questions and more in this Business Analysis/Requirements Management Practice Area. If you are new to BA/RM, take advantage of the resources below and don't be shy about commenting or asking questions. If you're a seasoned pro, help others out and become an influencer. We welcome contributions from all sources and the more you participate, the more visible you become. Let us help you move down the road from "giver of sage advice" to "Thought Leader".

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Over the years business analysis has continued to grow at a rapid rate and is often seen as a critical leadership competency for Projects, Programs, and Portfolios. Business Analysis provides important value by reducing project costs and increasing the potential return, or benefits. This PMI virtual event will provide insights on just how critical of a role business analysis plays in the overall success of project while giving you the BA insights, resources, and tools you need for total project and career success.

If you perform business analysis, your work is vital to project and program success. To most effectively support your organization and advance in your career, you need to know how to apply BA to any situation and delivery method. The new PMI Guide to Business Analysis will help you achieve this! Get an exclusive preview, with in-depth insights, at the PMI Business Analysis Virtual Conference 2017.

Advance your BA skills! Don’t miss the most popular Business Analysis event of the year! We’re sharing career journeys and talking about the hottest BA and agile BA topics. Catch these sessions from the only event designed with your future in mind to help you get ahead.

Upcoming Webinars

PMOs are an integral part an organization’s strategic plan for implementing improvement, keeping the business running, and directing change. The PMO has a wide range of responsibilities with a diverse set of stakeholders and an ever increasing demand for status. Thus, many PMOs are transforming into “Strategic PMOs” and assumed the role of defining the, and reporting the status of, the clear line of sight from Strategic Intent to Project Outcomes. This implies a method of consistent reporting status to various stakeholders, of extremely diverse projects, to stakeholders with various job functions throughout the organization.
This presentation will examine a real example of creating a Visual Control Board for a HealthCare IT PMO. It will explore the entire foundation of the PMO purpose and how it provides a single visual of all projects. It will demonstrate a sample of the board as well as the purpose of the PMO as a strategic partner. The presentation will discuss:
• Run the Business / Improve the Business Model
• Strategic Partner Model
• The Importance of a Visual Control Board
• Do Our Project Outcomes Impact KPI’s?
• Communicating Project Status for entire PMO
• PMO Visual Control Chart Example
If you want to better understand a PMO’s approach to communicating the health of multiple projects to many stakeholders via a visual control board, then this presentation is for you. This example is for a healthcare organization, but the concept spans all industries and provides important knowledge to help the PMO become a strategic partner with the entire organization.

By 2025, regardless of industry or sector, senior leaders and managers will spend at least 60% of their time selecting, prioritizing, and driving the execution of projects. In fact, soon "we will all become project leaders, but many of us are not prepared for this shift.” According to recent research, the number of individuals working in project-based roles will increase from 66 million (in 2017) to 88 million (forecast 2027). And the value of project-oriented economic activity worldwide will grow from $12 trillion (in 2013) to $20 trillion (forecast 2027). Those are millions of projects requiring millions of project leaders per year. In this landscape the percentage of work activities performed as part of projects is markedly increasing as projects are becoming the essential model to deliver change and create value around the world. The so-called gig economy is also driven by projects.

On-demand Webinars

In this three-part podcast, Laura Paton, MBA, PMI-PBA, PMP, CBAP, CSM, the lead author of PMI’s Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide, discusses elicitation and analysis techniques for business analysts, as well as the new practice guide and who will benefit from it.

In this three-part podcast, Laura Paton, MBA, PMI-PBA, PMP, CBAP, CSM, the lead author of PMI’s Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide, discusses elicitation and analysis techniques for business analysts, as well as the new practice guide and who will benefit from it.

In this three-part podcast, Laura Paton, MBA, PMI-PBA, PMP, CBAP, CSM, the lead author of PMI’s Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide, discusses elicitation and analysis techniques for business analysts, as well as the new practice guide and who will benefit from it.

In this seminar, Dr. Reich will first discuss two practices which can position a project to deliver value: Design Thinking and Benefits Mapping. Then she will review findings from a large scale study done to compare predictive and agile methodologies. An unexpected and interesting finding is that combining predictive and agile practices into a hybrid approach can produce good outcomes.

One of the reasons Santa Claus is so productive in toy making is because he spends a lot of time in the workshop with the elves listening to their challenges and success. This concept of “going out to the field” is rooted in LEAN and Six Sigma philosophy and captures the value of a leader’s presence in the field, observation of the work where it is being done, and the teaming of people and process in the spirit of Kaizen.

Blog Insights

A new collaborative blog featuring the contributions from the core team members of PMI's Foundational Standard in Business Analysis. This blog will provide the community with insight into PMI's development of the standard to generate professional discussions about the content in advance of the scheduled reviews.

A collaborative blog with contributions from members of the PMI Requirements Management Community of Practice and various authors and presenters who have dealt with the topic of requirements management.

This deliverable aligns with the concepts expressed in the article Strategic Requirements Management. This template should be used in conjunction with a more traditional requirements document to assist in the prioritizing of features and the finalizing of scope elements. It can also support discussions around changes in scope during the project. The cells below provide a basic summary of each column.

The Requirements Management Plan is primarily used for communications, giving all stakeholders a view on how this process is managed for your project. It completely answers the very common question, "How are you identifying and managing your project requirements?"

This planning guide will help you with the review and selection of project requirements to be included in the current scope. All requirements candidates are captured here, along with some basic information about them. Each candidate is then scored based on a number of different factors. The completed template provides a validation that the requirements ultimately approved are the ones that are the most appropriate for inclusion.

The primary purpose of this document is to track the status of change requests that have been created on the project. For smaller projects or projects where the scope is well defined, the log may not be useful. For larger, more complex projects, or for those projects where there is a lot of change, a change request log can be very useful.

The project scope statement details your project's deliverables and describes the major objectives, which includes measurable criteria for success. Use this template to document the six essential elements.

Learn From Others

Project bugs and the forecasting of progress can be complex. An Excel spreadsheet can be employed to gauge the progress of the testing and resolution teams. Using this simplistic method in conjunction with test-estimation techniques can help the project manager determine the completion date for testing efforts.

Project teams are often faced with the need to quickly make decisions and are often called upon to defend and explain their decision-making process. A simple weighted matrix of choices can be a team-building activity and provide traceability for critical business decisions.

While it might be beneficial for business analysts to know the intricacies of the field they are working in, getting input from the real SMEs in the field helps to build a product that caters to the pulse of the customer. This in turn helps achieve a good customer experience—and a better reputation for the organization.

Business assessment has become so crucial to success that the project manager and business analyst must operate even more closely together. How does that work in practice? And what responsibilities is each role accountable for?

It’s common for PMs to be asked to manage a project that modifies a business process. These projects require that business analysis takes on a broad scope with project roles and stakeholders that may be unfamiliar to you. Be better prepared by knowing some key players and how they fit into such a project.

Business analysis is perceived as a role with a great deal of cachet and is deemed to have a fair bit of value. This author's challenge to that perspective? Business analysis is far less of a role than it is a mindset.

Business analysis that precedes system implementation is one of the key factors influencing overall project success. The goal of the analysis is to elicit requirements on the solution and provide inputs for their prioritization.

Business continues to change. Some of these changes are the result of new business models that have been created by the evolution of one or more technologies. This is what is turning the spotlight on the professionals we all know as business analysts.